Rob Bishop: “I rise today to honor the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, headquartered in my hometown of Brigham City, Utah…”

“I rise today to honor the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, headquartered in my hometown of Brigham City, Utah, and located throughout northern Utah and southern Idaho, and specifically to pay tribute to this tribe as it enters a new chapter in its history. For more than 1,500 years, the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation has cared for much of the land that consumes my district as well as the districts of my colleagues in Idaho and Nevada. Last month, the Shoshones took ownership of a portion of the land along the Bear River in Idaho where as many as 380 of their ancestors were killed by the U.S. Cavalry on January 29, 1863. The Bear River Massacre, as it is called, was the worst slaughter of Native Americans west of the Mississippi, with an estimate of double the number of deaths of those at Wounded Knee. Now, for the first time in its history, 26 acres where so many Shoshones perished will be treated as the sacred burial ground that it is.”